curious notes

By mean reversion, pessimistic historiographies will usually be right

By mean reversion, periods of greater development will more likely get worse than better.1 And, more histories are written during periods of greater development. Accordingly, the modal history will be written during a decline rather than increase in development.

  1. This thought was prompted by zas.bsky.social pointing out that "Whig History" (which posits positive progress over time) is "an aberration ... compared to almost all other popular historiographies throughout history" (link).↩